About 50% of Stargate: TCG is about deck building, so I thought a series of articles revolving around the basics might be good for new players and veterans alike. Since I usually start my deck building with choosing of the Team Characters, I thought this would be a good place to start this series of articles. As always, I hope my ideas are helpful, if not to build your own decks, at least to give you an idea about how it can be done.

Choose a Concept

Probably the first thing to think about when choosing your team characters is a concept to build your deck around. For example, do I want to play the Makepeace (NID Mole) game, focusing glyphs on him to boost him later in the game? Am I going to try the Martouf (Tok'ra Liaison)/Rak'nor (Rebel Convert) combo, or go with Jack O'Neill (Team Leader)? Which skills do I want to be most proficient in?

There are many ideas to base your team around, but keep one thing in mind: Where do you want to place your glyphs when you complete missions? You should know the answer to that question before you come to the table to play. If you include two glyph-hungry characters that you intend to use, like Balinsky (Insightful Archaeologist) and Makepeace (NID Mole), you'll be torn on where to place your glyphs. If you divide placement between the two, they'll each be less effective. Or if you include two or three characters that all want the same glyph, you might not have a strategy of where to place it. This isn't to say that you can't put conflicting characters together; that just might be a good strategy to confuse your opponent, so he doesn't know where the glyphs will go. Or it could give you options. The point, though, is that you should know in your own mind where you will place the glyphs when you come to the table.

Experience

To be competitive, you generally need a higher experience from your team members, at least 15 or 16 experience. If you have 14, or definitely if you have 13 or lower, you better plan to have a quick aggressive deck that can complete 2 or more missions in a turn. You'll have to really race to get the win before your opponent gets an experience win. 17 or more experience may just give you the edge, though.

Skills

Are you going to balance all 4 skills? Or focus on just 2 or 3? Both strategies are fine, but choosing the skills of your team characters is a major decision, one that you have to have in mind for the whole process.

If you try to balance all 4 skills you'll have all four types of missions covered, but it may be a little harder to beat them, or you may have to include more 3 difficulty missions than you'd like. To quote a player Huajozu: "A balanced deck tends to bring balanced results."

If you try to focus on 2 or 3 skills and only barely cover the 3rd or 4th, if you cover it at all, you'll need a plan on how to handle that mission type. There are a number of strategies to choose from. If you include Jack O'Neill (Team Leader), Daniel Jackson (Linguistic Expert), or Walter Harriman (Technician), hopefully you can choose the next mission and skip the mission type you don't like. Or you can include a Dialing Computer to jump through missions, even after you've decided not to complete any more this turn; then you can go back and choose which missions you want, placing the undesirable ones on the bottom of your deck. Finally, other plans include R & R or Antoniek Armband, blocking characters from a mission you can't complete to beef their skills for the next mission.

My Example

My example is not always the best, but I'll use it to illustrate the concept. I'll start my deck with my favorite character: Daniel Jackson (Adventurer). I like having him either to create a huge power resource for late in the game, or at least to give me a head start so I can bring out my 5 cost Characters on turn 2 or deploy and use a Transport Rings in the same turn by turn 3. Daniel Jackson has 3 Culture, 1 Science, 0 Combat, and 2 Ingenuity (3/1/0/2) so I'll limit my team to Culture, Science, and Ingenuity.

Now that I have Daniel, I want to have a couple of back-up characters to place glyphs on, in case I already have a certain glyph on Daniel, for example. I personally like Harold Maybourne (Ally of Opportunity)'s ability, and he has just the right skills (2/2/0/2), so I'll include him.

I'm at (5/3/0/4), so I'll try to beef up my Science a bit. The characters that would especially help are Samantha Carter, Thor, or Janet Fraiser (Field Medic), each with 3 Science. Thor would really help my Culture and Science, so he might be a viable option, but his low experience would bring me down to 10 total, so far, so I'd have to have a 5 or 6 experience Character as my last choice to stay competitive (plus he's a rare, and for the sake of the Through the Gate redemption, I try to include as few rares as possible in my deck). Samantha Carter would give me 3 Science, and still help with 1 Culture and 1 Ingenuity. Her 2 Combat would go to waste, though. Janet Fraiser has exactly the skills I need (no Combat) and at 3 Science and 1 Culture, she's like the perfect fit for my Daniel Jackson.

So far I have Daniel Jackson (Adventurer), Janet Fraiser (Field Medic), and Harold Maybourne (Ally of Opportunity). This gives me skills (6/6/0/6) and experience of 12. For my last character I had tried Samantha Carter for a while (7/9/2/7) but this left me with very little boosting options for my characters, and her ability I didn't find very useful for my team. After playing around with my deck for a while, I decided on Svetlana Markov (Brilliant Scientist) for (2/2/0/2) and 4 experience. Not only did this give me the 16 experience I wanted, she fit my team exactly in skills to round me out at (8/8/0/8) and she had boosting text I desperately wanted. I call this the Pacifist Team, due to their complete lack in Combat skills.

In review of my team, now, I have 8 of each of my 3 target skills. This means, if my opponent doesn't stop a character, I can complete even a 5 skill mission on turn 1. Generally your opponent can play at most 1 difficulty per 1 point of power, or 2 difficulty per 3 points of power, based on the cost of complications. I have a plan of where I'll place the glyphs: First glyph usually on Daniel Jackson, to give me a power boost. First Scorpius glyph on Harold Maybourne, unless it's the first glyph; then it goes on Jackson.

One or two other glyphs go on Svetlana. Here's my rule for her: If the glyph doesn't match the mission I completed to get it, I'll place it on her. For example, Orion (the hourglass symbol) gives her +1 Culture, so if I'm completing a Science mission that has the Orion glyph, I'll place it on her, but if I'm completing a Culture mission that has the Orion glyph, I'll place it on Daniel. Why? Once you complete a Culture mission, you're less likely to encounter another one, because there are only three in your mission pile. But if you complete that Science mission with an Orion glyph, and there's still 3 Culture missions in your pile, boosting her Culture will give you a greater chance of being able to use that boost on future missions. Of course, this is just a rule of thumb, subject to in-game judgment calls. I hope that paragraph made sense for you.

So I have my skills, experience, and a plan for the glyphs. Now I need to select missions to fit my team and build a Hero deck to fit the concept.